Security is an integral function of managing a facility, and is particularly important in commercial buildings where business is conducted and valuable assets reside. Managing an energy plant, a government building, a stadium, a port, a marina, a military base or a hospital, for example, all would benefit from efficiencies in securing the premises from potentially harmful visitors, vehicles and vendors. Whether as a group of locations, buildings, a set of docks, or a single structure, managing access of vehicles and vendors is an important component to securing and managing any facility.
At the heart of the matter is the multitude of safety issues associated with providing a mechanism for managing the access of permitted vehicles, identifying threats and addressing specific risks related to insurance, too little insurance or a lack thereof. Therefore, a system and method for managing vehicle access to a facility is desired. It is important to note that by managing the access of a vehicle to a facility, the facility is simultaneously managing visitors, vendors, contractors and insurance requirements associated with the vehicle.
In large facilities, security is generally managed and maintained by a security firm and their personnel to protect the occupants of the facility, the property within the facility, and the actual structure of the facility. To that end, one of the responsibilities of the security vendor is to control access to the facility, i.e., to grant entry to authorized personnel and deny entry to others who are unauthorized. Further, the security vendor is also responsible for verifying whether certain property may be brought into or removed from the facility. Particularly, authorized personnel may access a facility by a vehicle into a garage or a loading dock, for example. Many times identifying people and vehicles and matching them with credentials and authorization is inefficient, time consuming and expensive. Moreover, current methods for managing the throughput, expected traffic and availability of a loading dock, parking area, or other area provisioned for vehicles are inefficient from the perspective of managing workflow and security.
When a vehicle arrives at a facility, it is typically the responsibility of the personnel of the security vendor to check whether the arriving vehicle is authorized to enter the facility. Presently, this procedure is generally performed manually—typically by the personnel looking up the whether the vehicle is on a provided list. However, the vehicle is generally unknown when sent by a vendor or delivery company. Even when someone within the facility schedules an individual or a contractor to visit, the personnel does not know the vehicle. And, nowadays with the vehicle itself being a significant threat to the building, not knowing whether the vehicle or vendor is permitted is exceedingly important. Generally, it is not the vehicle, but the name of the arriving person or vendor that is documented in a notebook along with associated access rights. This manual method is often time-consuming, which delays the arriving vehicle entry to the facility and delays the entry of other arriving vehicles waiting on line, possibly causing traffic as well.
Additionally, present systems and methods of managing vehicle access typically do not take proper account of the size and nature of vehicles, the purpose of the vehicles' access and their potential for harm to the facility. In some instances the vehicle is owned and managed by an entity that is sub-contracted and/or the vehicle sent is not associated with the facility. A delivery company, and/or a sub-contracted/leased fleet may be employed to perform services. In order to effectuate and understand the relationship and to grant access, the current method of finding out this information through phone calls and other manual methods is inefficient and lacks the proficiency that is required for proper management of access to facilities.
Furthermore, occasions may arise, for example at a facility, on a campus, or at a building complex etc., in which a vehicle requires a form of special permission. Special permission might be, for example, permission to access a specific area, permission to remove equipment from the facility (e.g. towing, waste removal, passenger or shipping pick-up, etc.), or permission to enter a facility outside of assigned hours. In such a case, the vehicle driver may be instructed verbally by superiors or via a service request, and must explain the access several times to security guards or personnel who question the driver throughout the access period.
Presently, to deal with this issue, security passes are generally issued manually or verbally. An office administrator, security officer, or facility manager typically hand writes or prints up the pass using a multipart form: one copy to the person requiring special permission, another copy to the facility management office for filing, and another copy to the security desk for validation. When the vehicle driver presents the security personnel with the security pass it can be very difficult for the examining personnel to validate the pass adequately and expediently. Handwriting and printouts can be difficult to read and the pass may have been issued by a person or persons who are no longer on premises (e.g. different shift) or no longer available. If the driver or workers leave the premises and a new driver is assigned to drive the vehicle, the pass will be construed as invalid since it would pertain to the initial driver and not to the vehicle or vendor.
This manual approach is very inefficient in terms of the time needed to manually generate a security pass, the overhead required to manage the attendant paperwork, as well as the time required to manually validate the pass.
The difficulties, limitations and desires suggested in the preceding are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather are among many which demonstrate that prior art systems and methods for managing the access of vendors and vehicles would welcome improvement.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system and method that served to manage vehicle and vendor access to a facility, thereby streamlining the process of managing the delivery of products and services to a facility.